


Fragments

by mnemosyne



Category: The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:53:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosyne/pseuds/mnemosyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of TAJ one-shots and prompt fills. Check chapters for tags</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prompt: "Quiet Me", Anders/Gaia

“I thought you’d be happier,” Gaia’s voice is quiet, clipped at the other end of the line, and since Anders’ phone isn’t a piece of shit, it’s got to be her. He sighs deeply into the handset, pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I am happy. I couldn’t be happier. I’m doing a little dance over here,”  _  
_

“Is that why you’re calling me at 3am?”

“It’s not 3am for you,” he informs her archly, and can hear her harrumph back at him. Truth is, he hadn’t called her. Hadn’t intended to anyway. He’d been woken up as a van rattled past on the road outside, and when he couldn’t get back to sleep again, had gently rolled over the warm body, the  _wrong_ warm body, he’d been curled around, and gone to check his phone messages. It had almost been a surprise when Gaia’s voice had started speaking from the handset.

“Anders?”

“I’m here.” He glances back at the bedroom door as a shuffle of movement sounds within, but it remains closed. Quietly, he pads to the corner of his kitchen, away from the blue glow of his fishtank, as if the darkness can shroud this conversation.

“Do you want to hear something stupid?”

“Always.”

“I’m terrified.”

“I know,” he says. He hears her breath catch, can picture her face, frowning, trying to mask her emotion from him, even though he can’t even see it. There’s a song playing in the background, something female and acoustic, and interspersed with the light tapping of Gaia’s fingernails not quite in the right rhythm.

“My whole life,” she says, “was building up to this epic thing, and it’s not even going to matter in a few days. Everything that’s happened – I was going to be  _Frigg_ , Anders. And now, I’m not even going to be Idunn.” she snorts. “And I’m stuck on the other side of the world and nobody’s going to know who Gaia is.  _I_ don’t know who Gaia is.”

“So come back and figure it out,” he tells her. “Jesus, Gaia, I thought you were the smart one. You can scratch that off your search for your identity.”

There is a silence. He can still hear the tapping.

“I don’t have any money,” she says eventually. Anders smiles.

“Luckily for you,” he replies, “I have a really great assistant.”


	2. Prompt: "how about axl/zeb and their first christmas as a couple?", Axl/Zeb

“Well, what do you think?!”

There is a distinct, demanding, excitement in Axl’s question as he waves his arms in the general direction of the window. Zeb yawns, stretches, and frowns.

“Axl,” he says, “why are you wearing boxers that say ‘World’s greatest Dad’ on them?”

Axl looks down, then shrugs at Zeb. “They’re Mike’s,” he says simply. “But you’re missing the point.  _Look_.”

Zeb isn’t quite prepared for the sight before him. It’s a tree, he’s fairly sure, although he thinks that might be too generous a descriptor for the collection of twigs and falling pine needles  that doesn’t appear to be quite able to stand of its own volition, if the amount of sticky tape and string is anything to go by. But it’s covered in small lights and little bells and –

“Is that a picture of you, Axl?”

“Odin trumps Jesus. Thought we proved that.”

“Highly blasphemous, not at all appropriate to the season, yet somehow fair enough.”

With a wary finger, Zeb prods at one of the branches, and only winces a little when another spray of needles fall onto the wrapping paper that has been spread beneath. “It’s not very big is it?”

“Good things,” responds Axl, “come in small packages.”

“Can’t fault that logic,” Zeb agrees.  

“Big packages-” Axl continues with a half-concealed laugh.

“No,” says Zeb. He points at Axl. “No, it is too early in the morning for terrible innuendo.”

“Sometimes, Zeb, you have no sense of occasion.” There’s a fond smile tugging at the corners of Axl’s mouth.  “Besides, the tree was only surprise  _one_.”

There is something smug in his voice, and Zeb leans back, studying his face closely. Axl says nothing, but his smile is getting wider and wider and his fingers are twitching and -

“There’s mistletoe in your pants, isn’t there?”

“ _Yes_.”

Zeb can’t help but snort loudly, and shake his head in despair. “That is so not good for you,” he says, and lets Axl tug him into a kiss anyway.


	3. post-series, untitled Gaia drabble

The world is gone crazy, and Gaia sits, cross-legged on a bench on the South Bank, watching tourists and restaurant staff and men spray-painted in gold and silver dashing about. Her fingers tap out a rhythm to a song she doesn’t quite remember on the can of beer she is holding.There are five missed calls on her phone and a text message that she hasn’t read, all from the same number. It lights up again as she sits there, flashing over, and over, and over.

The sky explodes in gold and green and it feels for a moment like all the oxygen has been burned from the world. Her heart thuds a thunderstorm in her chest, beer spills over cracked paving.

When it is over, Gaia picks up her phone and turns the ringer on high.


	4. Ty & Val, early season 2

"Are you happy, Val?"

She looks up at the voice, trying to place it, and frowns when she doesn’t recognise the man who has spoken. He stands a little distance away, and though she has instinctively begun to turn away, there is something sad, something so familiarly sad, in his eyes it stops her in her tracks. She shifts the child in her arms and offers him a small, wary smile.

"I’m sorry, have we met?"

The man quirks his mouth into a small smile, or a grimace of pain, “I suppose not,” he says, “I’m Axl’s brother.”

 **Mike’s brother**. Val’s breath catches, but she forces her surprise away; she studies him, and he is still under her gaze. “Ty, then? You’re the one I don’t  know. Did Mike send you to check up on me?”

"Would it be better if he had?"

"I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean."

Ty sighs a little, and that echoes through Val like something she’s heard a thousand times before. “We’re not the easiest family,” he tells her, “I just wanted to see if you were ok. Stupid thought, really.”

"No that’s-"

But he already backing off, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Val lets her voice fall silent as she watches him leave. There’s a tension in his shoulders and a tight stiffness in the way he moves, like he is concentrating on the very act of leaving. She has half a mind to call after him, to ask why he was there at all.

It is then though, that the baby cries out, tugging at her mother’s hair. Val winces and looks down, tries to disentangle herself with her free hand. 

She pulls a face at her daughter, and in the little girl’s giggle, forgets entirely about the young man crossing over the other side of the square.


End file.
